Taking back our communities

I27

I think we need to recognize that we want to get to that point where we're really taking back...our community. It's not that I'm opposed to violent stuff, it's just that we need to do the groundwork so we can lay that out. That requires collective decisions, patience, and getting to that point is not something that just happens right away. [That’s] one [of the] thing[s] I can appreciate...about the Zapatistas, they went into the jungle in 1983 and didn't come out until 1994...and I think that's something that we need to think about.

Imperfect victories

I19

I was recently watching a video of people trying to block a deportation at an airport and I think that's a win…..We’re actually physically going to try and block you from deporting this person so that you actually cannot. I think that's a win and more of a win than a policy concession....The problem is that those kinds of wins are always so finite in time and they're not perfect, right? They're by no means perfect in that maybe not every form of domination is rejected in that moment but some form of it is and I think that's fairly rare.

Radical values

I6

I don't want to point to a specific example of an activist initiative and say that this is the guide to the future. My own feeling is that there are values that I think I'd like to see broadened to be values that people can work with. Things like solidarity, affinity, autonomy, cooperation over competition, these sorts of vague themes. And then there are various experiments with those which are sometimes inspiring, like cooperatives. Those sorts of things have those values in them.

Care and organizing

I21

I think it's important to nurture people in the political movements that are important to me. So the form is as important as the content. So how we organize, and how we talk to each other, and how we behave is extremely important….a person I truly respec[t] once said to me that [the]...only...criteria for [being] progressive [is] they had to be interested in ideas and care about people and if they didn't have one or the other they were not progressive. So there are a lot of people in our progressive movements who either don't care about people or don't care about ideas...that's what I mean… [by] the converging of the social and the moral.

Connecting struggles

I12

[I spend] a lot of time networking with people and trying to be inspired by others and also trying to have conversations with people to...share some of my experiences and knowledge...with them and...be an active part of the resistance against capitalism, against the state, against prisons, and to support people who have had…[their] freedom taken away from them by [the] prison society that we live in.

Ducking for cover

I30

I think the mistake the Left makes...is when they come under attack, to duck and get defensive instead of standing up saying who they are. Like the House Committee on Un-American Activities in the States [during] the McCarthy era, there were people who ran for cover and others who stood up and defied them. Well, the people that defied them are now recognized heroes for having the guts to do that and when they did take a stand they suffered for it but it opened people's eyes.

Manipulating choices

I26

I volunteered with an underground midwife....she still caught babies, still did the exact same job...but there was no funding for it, women still paid her out of pocket. So where did that take me? I guess that was a turning point in my politics because it really made me think not just about women's choices and how women conceptualize those choices and manifest them but how...the broader society manipulates women, or offers certain choices for women.

Sectarianism, violence, and authority

I24

When I was involved in the sectarian left in the sixties and seventies the vision then was that we were going to take over control of the state and run society…[in order to] creat[e] equality and all of that sort of thing. There was never any clear understanding of how that was going to happen and the propaganda among those sectarian groups of one kind or another was always that in the Soviet Union everybody's got a place to live, and everybody's got a job, and they’ve got health care, and nobody ever looked at the fact that people were being shot everyday for virtually nothing. I think that most of these sectarian groups were characterized by the Stalin-type leader who was the ultimate authority.

The limits of telling a better story

I13

People on the left have this conceit that if only we explained things better to people then the scales would be lifted from their eyes and they would all realize that [the source of their problems is] really capitalism after all. That's not necessarily true….the [first] problem with [this focus on] framing is that it's simplistic….and the world isn't simple. So we rankle at the idea of simplifying things for good reasons. The second reason is that it's not an equal fight, it's not like we're both starting out from the same situation on the right and the left….they're in an open competition and….of course the right has power behind it.

Leadership and revolution

I23

...a belief in intrinsic spontaneity of the masses to be revolutionary without hard, slogging leadership….[is a] disease...